Using Akume with Google Meet

On Google Meet, Akume joins an ordinary meeting as a participant. There is nothing to install: you paste the meeting link, somebody in the call admits the translator, and from that moment every speaker is translated as they talk. The translator speaks the translation aloud right in the call, captions appear on its tile, and anyone can also follow along on a listener link in their browser.

Use the right link

Akume needs the join link for the meeting itself: a meet.google.com address followed by the three-part code, in the shape meet.google.com/xxx-xxxx-xxx. Take it from the calendar invite or from the meeting window and paste it whole. A calendar page, or the code typed on its own, is not a join link.

Start the call, then send the translator in

1. Open the meeting, or have the host open it. A call nobody has joined yet has nobody to admit a participant.
2. Paste the Meet link into Akume, list the languages that will be spoken in the call (from 2 to 10, see Languages and how they are chosen), and start the session.
3. Watch the participant list. The translator appears there like any guest, usually within a few seconds.
4. Let it in when Meet asks. A guest who is not on the invitation is admitted by hand: the usual prompt appears in the meeting window and one click answers it. Anyone hosting the call can do it.
5. Share the listener link with anyone who also wants captions, or a language of their own, in a browser tab: everyone in the call already hears the translation spoken aloud. As soon as the translator is in the call it posts the link in the Meet chat itself (a short message in English, pinned), and Akume copies it to your clipboard as the session starts in case you need to paste it. Listeners choose a language; if the status line asks them to press play, one tap on Play starts the audio, and the same button pauses.

Worth checking

• Somebody has to see the prompt. It appears in the meeting window, so if everyone is working in another tab it can sit unanswered while the translator waits. Ask a co-host to keep an eye on the first seconds of the call.
• A repeating meeting keeps its code. The link in the series invitation belongs to every occurrence, so the same paste starts next week’s session.
• The language list is fixed at the start. Adding a language later means stopping the session and starting a new one, which also produces a new listener link.
• Headphones if you are following along. Anyone who opens the listener link while sitting in the meeting should listen through headphones: translated speech coming out of laptop speakers goes back into everyone else’s call through the microphone.

Meeting somewhere else? The flow is the same in Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and Your first meeting with Akume walks through the whole thing from signing up.